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Lot Essay
In the 1920s, Peploe’s series of still lifes documents the development of his modern style, of which Pink Roses in a Vase is an exceptional example. It was painted around 1929, a period considered to be the height of his career when he executed some of his most vibrant still lifes. Peploe found in this genre his own characteristic way of experimenting with colours and shapes, linking him to the Post-Impressionist Masters such as Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse.
The virtually unlimited variations of the shape, colour and arrangement of the flowers meant it was a subject Peploe returned to again and again. The work is a classic example of Peploe’s many still lifes of the 1920s, demonstrating the care and attention taken by the artist to perfect this technique. He was known to spend painstaking hours arranging and re-arranging the various props he kept in his studio – favourite literary works, a selection of blue and white vases, freshly cut flowers and fruit amongst others. Guy Peploe characterises the artist’s approach to perfecting his compositions as ‘intense, sometimes pseudo-scientific investigation…with tireless, almost obsessive energy [he] tried to construct the significant out of the common place’ (G. Peploe, S.J. Peploe, Farnham, 2012, p. 119).
Pink Roses in a Vase is a perfectly harmonious composition. The main focus of the present work is a vase of roses, behind an open book. Five blooms of varying pastel shades are delicately arranged in the white vessel. There is a pleasing balance between the weighty blooms on the left and the contrast between the thick folds of the drapes on the right and reflections in the foreground of the tabletop. The composition is depicted with expressive brushstrokes and thick lines which define the objects without enclosing them. The present work, with its conjunction of forms, colours and symmetry, demonstrates Peploe’s mastery of the still life genre.
In 1920 Peploe first visited the tiny Scottish island of Iona, a place that would affect his work profoundly and that he would go on to visit most years from then until his death. His good friend Cadell owned a house on the island and Iona became somewhat of a sanctuary to Peploe. The still life on the verso of the present work, Still Life with Wine Glass and Fruit, possesses the effects of these trips to Iona through the use of colour that also appears in his works of the island. The icy pastel pinks, blues and oranges, with the use of pure white is reminiscent of the palette used by Peploe in his many depictions of the isolated coves and beaches of Iona.
Pink Roses in a Vase is an essay in dynamism of both composite form and colour, in which the painter has masterfully employed the avant-garde techniques he learnt while living in France, while maintaining the traditions from his early career to produce a unique and individual style at once identifiable as his own.
The virtually unlimited variations of the shape, colour and arrangement of the flowers meant it was a subject Peploe returned to again and again. The work is a classic example of Peploe’s many still lifes of the 1920s, demonstrating the care and attention taken by the artist to perfect this technique. He was known to spend painstaking hours arranging and re-arranging the various props he kept in his studio – favourite literary works, a selection of blue and white vases, freshly cut flowers and fruit amongst others. Guy Peploe characterises the artist’s approach to perfecting his compositions as ‘intense, sometimes pseudo-scientific investigation…with tireless, almost obsessive energy [he] tried to construct the significant out of the common place’ (G. Peploe, S.J. Peploe, Farnham, 2012, p. 119).
Pink Roses in a Vase is a perfectly harmonious composition. The main focus of the present work is a vase of roses, behind an open book. Five blooms of varying pastel shades are delicately arranged in the white vessel. There is a pleasing balance between the weighty blooms on the left and the contrast between the thick folds of the drapes on the right and reflections in the foreground of the tabletop. The composition is depicted with expressive brushstrokes and thick lines which define the objects without enclosing them. The present work, with its conjunction of forms, colours and symmetry, demonstrates Peploe’s mastery of the still life genre.
In 1920 Peploe first visited the tiny Scottish island of Iona, a place that would affect his work profoundly and that he would go on to visit most years from then until his death. His good friend Cadell owned a house on the island and Iona became somewhat of a sanctuary to Peploe. The still life on the verso of the present work, Still Life with Wine Glass and Fruit, possesses the effects of these trips to Iona through the use of colour that also appears in his works of the island. The icy pastel pinks, blues and oranges, with the use of pure white is reminiscent of the palette used by Peploe in his many depictions of the isolated coves and beaches of Iona.
Pink Roses in a Vase is an essay in dynamism of both composite form and colour, in which the painter has masterfully employed the avant-garde techniques he learnt while living in France, while maintaining the traditions from his early career to produce a unique and individual style at once identifiable as his own.